# Innovation and the new workforce
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I'm keynoting the annual IHRIM (International Human Resource Information Management) professional association in about an hour here in Houston, TX; I'll have an audience of about 1,000 or so. My talk today broadly revolves around the issue of "what's happening with our workforce." I'm taking the audience on a tour of the key drivers which impact organizations today, whether business or government, velocity: business is just plain fast, and our workforce must cope with that change capacity: there's a big disconnect in how quickly some people can deal with rapid change compared to others idea instantaneity: we're in a new world in which ideas or issues can quickly speed out of control, or work to our advantage knowledgeability: in which global insight is increasing at a furious pace, leading to ever larger pools of knowledge innovation opportunity: such rates of discovery lead to massive new opportunities with bringing new products and services to market idea discovery: our interconnected world now allows unique ideas to gain a global audience in a flash consumer spontaneity: the low attention span consumer is fleeting when it comes to loyalty to brand business intensity: operational excellence is the name of the game, given an economy which simply runs "fast" skills availability: all these trends that it is going to be more difficult to access skills My key point for the audience: When we are thinking about deployment of skills , we must be thinking about: Attracting the right skills ...... at the right time ... for the right purpose Providing for business flexibility in a time of rapid change Establishing a constantly shifting, evolving "workforce on demand" Enabling this with sophisticated tools, infrastructure and skills access capabilities - managed by folks such as the IHRIM These are issues I've covered extensively in my analysis, Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills here

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2007/05/innovation-and-the-new-workforce/